


No prayers nor bells

by Innsmouth



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:19:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innsmouth/pseuds/Innsmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of the life of Roxy Lalonde: guerrilla-in-training, firearms enthusiast, and daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No prayers nor bells

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmictier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmictier/gifts).



The first time that Roxy is handed a rifle, it is too big for her to hold. Her mother has to stand behind her and guide her hands into a rough approximation of a proper grip. “Put the stock against your shoulder _,”_ she says. “Like that. Good _.”_ Roxy’s finger curls near the trigger, and her mother gently nudges it away to rest on the guard. “Not yet. Just get used to the weight for now.” __  
  
“Kinda young for this, isn’t she,” says her uncle from the sidelines. He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his khakis and leans back on his heels, impassive behind his mirrored aviators. Roxy loves her uncle; he makes funny movies and lets her hold some of the swords in his collection. Her mother calls him Uncle David or just David, and when she thinks no one is listening, Dave.  
  
Her mother turns briefly to look at him. “We have very little time,” she says. “You of all people should know that.”  
  
“She’s six, Rose,” he says.  
  
“I’m twenty-nine and playing at a resistance movement,” says her mother. “Same difference, really.”  
  
Uncle David merely sniffs and tugs a packet of Kleenex from his back pocket. The honk he lets out as he blows his nose sounds like an angry goose, and Roxy giggles.  
  
“Alas, the noble hero has fallen,” her mother says, voice dripping feigned melancholy. “Laid low in the flower of his youth by hay fever.”  
  
“Yeah, well, there’s a reason y’all travel down to see me most of the time,” he says. “Real pollenpocalypse here in Mirkwood. Got a bunch of little dudes dropping pollen bombs on the USS Noseterprise. It’s like the Battle of Midway all up in my schnozz.”  
  
The rifle is heavy, and Roxy’s arms are beginning to strain. She shifts in obvious discomfort, and her mother carefully lifts the gun from her hands. “You did very well,” she says. “Next time, I’ll show you how to load it.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 At ten, she is lying in the grass as the early morning dew soaks through her jeans. It is chilly this low to the ground, even in summer, and she is glad for the jacket she brought. Already the cicadas have begun to buzz in droning chorus, though they are few in number at such an early hour, and the music of their choir is patched with silence. Roxy squirms as she squints down the scope of the bipod-mounted Dragunov, damp trousers sticking to her legs.  
  
“Focus,” says her mother.  
  
“I _am_ ,” says Roxy, trying vainly not to shiver.  
  
“You’re talking to me and not aiming,” says her mother. “I do believe that your pants have begun to smoulder.”  
  
Despite rolling her eyes, Roxy hits the target twice, once in the chest and once where the groin would be. She looks up from the scope, seeking approval. Her mother’s face is carefully neutral. “You can do better,” she says.  
  
Roxy snorts. “So what?”  
  
“So you have to,” says her mother, and there is something in her face that makes Roxy fall silent.  
   
  
  
  
  
  
Roxy is thirteen years old and beginning to realize that not all girls are judged on their marksmanship, or being able to survive on their own in the woods, or whether or not they can make their trainers go _oof_ when they punch the padding over his stomach during their sparring. Her mother buys her a laptop for her birthday, and she spends hours poring over the vast sea of information at her fingertips. On a whim, she Googles _rose lalonde_ ; the usual book-jacket photos come up, but so does another picture that gives her pause.  
  
Her mother is at standing at a podium, her prepared speech laid neatly out before her, but instead of reading it she is glaring at someone off-camera, eyes bright with anger and mouth open in mid-snarl. _BESTSELLING AUTHOR SPEAKS OUT AGAINST CROCKERCORP-LOCKHEED MARTIN MERGER_ , the caption reads. Though the rest of the article is available only to paid subscribers, Roxy spends a long time on the page.  
  
Her mother has a quiet voice and soft writer’s hands, and Roxy wonders how a woman so seemingly poised and harmless could harbor such incandescent fury.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The disappearances start a month before she turns fifteen. Her mother is practically glued to her Blackberry as call after call comes in; her circle of acquaintances is shrinking like a tightening noose. Her grimness falls over the both of them like a shroud, and Roxy finds herself skittish and irritable, as though she herself were marked for vanishing. She clashes with her mother over insignificant things, adolescent antler-rattling exacerbated by the aura of foreboding over everything. Irritation boils over into anger, and she finally snaps.  
  
“What are you even doing, Mom?” she asks one day. “What the hell is so dangerous that you have to worry about the fuckin’ Men In Black snatching your friends?”  
  
“Would you believe me if I said it involved the fate of the world?” Her mother is as cold and inscrutable as an iceberg, and it makes Roxy all the more furious.  
  
She scoffs. “Bullshit.”  
  
“I thought you might prove less than willing to accept that possibility,” says her mother, and lays a bulging file on the table with a papery smack. Some of the papers peeking out of its sides are yellowed with age; a faded Polaroid flutters out to settle face-down on the table. Roxy reaches out to turn it over, the note on the back catching her eye: _Lalonde and English, ‘84._ She catches a glimpse before her mother casually tucks it into the pocket of her sweater; a woman with a long silver braid, one arm thrown around a girl in black with heavy eyeliner and her mother’s smirk.  
  
Though the photograph piques her curiosity, her interest is thoroughly snared by the contents of the folder. Reams of information flutter through her fingers, names and numbers standing out like eyes in the dark. Roxy reads, and learns, and slowly becomes aware of a numb sort of horror settling over her. Only when her mother returns with a glass of wine does she look up. “So,” she says, “Let me get this straight. Betty Crocker is actually a megabitch alien queen who wants to whip Earth’s sweetly subjugated booty?”  
  
“Pretty much,” says her mother, and takes a sip of her Riesling.  
  
“Jesus tittyfucking Christ,” says Roxy.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She goes on her first courier run at seventeen, fueled by a shot of Jagermeister and pure, unadulterated terror. Lake Placid’s empty streets turn into an obstacle course; she darts around fire hydrants and makes a spectacular leap over a Vespa abandoned on the middle of the road. The drone roaring in pursuit merely plows through it with a screech of protesting metal. Roxy’s footfalls on the cracked pavement thud almost as quickly as her heart as she makes a sudden bend between two buildings and throws herself behind a dumpster.  
  
With a dwindling _pshoooon_ , the drone powers down its thrusters to hover. Roxy can hear the _click-whirrrr_ of its head moving as it scans the area. The .45 in her thigh holster is too far to reach for in her cramped position. Not that it matters; a handgun round can’t penetrate the thick, spiked armor of a Crockercorp hunter-killer drone.  
  
She holds her breath.  
  
The drone moves on, the mournful howl of its thrusters fading into the distance. Slightly shocked at her own continued existence, Roxy wriggles out from her reeking hiding place and creeps off down the street to deliver a dozen coded words to the man living in the stockroom of the comic shop two blocks over.  
  
It takes her half a day to arrive, footsore and shaky, back at her home.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The day before her twentieth birthday is a quiet one. Snow falls gently outside, coating the forest in a thin blanket of white. A fire coils lazily around the logs in the fireplace as Roxy’s mother shrugs on her coat.  
  
Roxy slouches against the back of the sofa. “So you really think you can catch her off-guard?”  
  
“She’s stretched her resources too thin,” says her mother, fiddling with a button. “With Fieri and the clowns gone—“ A dark little smile flickers briefly into being on her face. “—she has no one to delegate to. She’s burdened by the minutiae of running a puppet government. If any time is right to strike, it’s now, while she’s still struggling to acclimate.”  
  
“If you say so,” says Roxy dubiously.  
  
She notices quite a few things, then. She notices that there is a permanence to the crows’-feet at the corners of her mother’s eyes, that the set of her shoulders is not quite as strong as it was, that white has crept into her hair in the front. She notices her mother’s grim-set lips, and the way that her hands tremble slightly as she slides her needles up her sleeves.  
  
“Hey,” she says, “Mom,” and she takes a half-step to wrap her arms around her mother, who starts before allowing Roxy to lean down and bury her face in the collar of her coat. “Don’t do this. Send somebody else or something, just…don’t.”  
  
“Roxy,” her mother says quietly, and she reaches up to run a hand through Roxy’s hair. “I have to. It has to be me. We all have a role to play, and mine happens to be the Perseus to an extraterrestrial gorgon. Besides, I’ve already booked my flight.”  
  
She smells of books and a perfume that Roxy never bothered to learn the name of, and it is with great reluctance that Roxy lets her go. Her mother adjusts her coat, composed as ever, and tugs the door open; a small eddy of snow whirls into the foyer as if blown by a tiny Boreas. Vapor trails from the tailpipe of the car idling outside.  
  
Her mother pauses at the threshold and glances back. “Roxy?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I am so proud of you,” she says softly. Before Roxy can muster a response, she steps out, closes the door behind her, and is gone.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
At twenty she buries her mother.

**Author's Note:**

> This got quite a bit more overdone and gratuitously angst-ridden than I intended, so I'm sorry about that. I also didn't get into the dynamics of their relationship as much as I would have liked to, so I apologize for that as well. Regardless, I hope that you enjoy this.
> 
> Edit: I do believe that I may have missed part of the prompt. If it was for Lalondecest as well, I am wholeheartedly sorry, and I can rewrite it after Ladystuck ends.


End file.
